Eco Printing on paper

Drying eco-prints on the clothes line 

  I took a  workshop on ecoprinting in June 2015, with master ecoprinter Wendy Feldberg in Ottawa, organized by the Out-of-the-Box fibre artists in Ottawa. I learned a lot and had so much fun discovering to things turned out.Wendy has a great blog where her ecoprinting experiments and experience are well documented.  The summer was coming to a close in September and I realized that this month would probably be one last opportunity to harvest my garden and to work outside to ecoprint.  So i got the great notes of the workshop out and started.  

Basic lasagna technique. The ecoprinting technique I used is what I will call the 'lasagna' method!  It consists of  layering  plant material and/or ferreous metals between sheets of paper, resulting in a bundle of sheet of papers separated by pigment-based material.  Then the bundle is compressed by some weights (I used old bricks) to ensure contact between paper and plants, and then is  exposed to steam for a couple of hours. With this method each sheet of paper will be printed on both sides, and each side can have a very different print, rather than a mirror image. 

Preparation. I wanted to print on paper (rather than fabric), so I choose Fabriano watercolour paper 140 lbs.  90 lbs paper is okay but more fragile. The paper was soaked in a solution of alum for 12 hours.  The alum will given some  mordant to the paper, so the vegetal pigment can bind to the paper better.

Set up to steam the paper/vegetal material lasagna

Paper soaking in an alum solution

Plants. I used hibiscus flowers, rose leaves, ferns, coleoptis leaves and flowers, yellow and red onion skins, geranium leaves, used ground coffee, black tea mixes, sumac leaves, flowers of  nasturtium,  leave of iris, leftover grape pulp (after making jelly) and  flowers of black eye susan flower and  some of the walnut husks leftover from previous project (see blog post on making walnut ink).  I also tried algae ( dry) and some tree seed pods. Wendy told us about ferrous objects creating interesting  prints and affecting the colour of the pigments from plants, so I added a cheese grater, nails and  other rusting metals. 

Here are some of the prints, along with the pigmented material arrangement.

Fig. 1a Some onion skins, sumac leave, hibiscus petal, coffee grounds, grape pulp
 and a piece of rusting iron are deposited on the paper

Fig. 1b) The two sheets facing each other  after taking out the bundle from the steamer 

Fig. 1c) This is the dry ecoprint on the sheet of paper 

Fig 1d) This is the ecoprint on the sheet of paper  placed on top of the plant material in Fig. 1a. Sumac print is shadowed; onion skin, iron and hibiscus flower petal and grape pulp  are  strong.
Grape pulp might produce  a fugitive print, meaning it will fade over time.

Onion skins responded very well (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Close up of onion skin on the damp paper after steaming for a few hours

Hibiscus flower petal made a great print in a surprising tint (Fig. 3).

Fig 3a) Hibiscus flower petal
 

Fig 3b) Print of the hibiscus material

 Rusting metal made a strong statement.

Fig. 4a) Rusting iron cheese grater is included

Fig 4b) Opening the lasagna

Fig 4c) Dry print of the cheese grater on bottom sheet

Fig 4d) Dry print on the top sheet

Fig 4e) Dry print on the other side of sheet in Fig 4d).  in other words, the mark made by the rusted cheese grater went through the paper and registered on the other side too.

Fig 5 Bricks were installed on top of the 'lasagna' during the steaming.
 The bundle was turned over mid-way in the steaming process
to expose the top layer to more steam

Printed papers were rinsed to remove vegetal matters, and then hung to  drip. Later when almost dry, the sheets were layered and placed under some weight to flatten.